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Re: Wanted: Examples of poor English from Japanese
Subject:Re: Wanted: Examples of poor English from Japanese From:"Nancy S. Burns" <nburns -at- NOAO -dot- EDU> Date:Tue, 15 Nov 1994 12:42:15 -0825
Frankly, I cringed when I read the following posting. I can understand
wanting serious examples that could prevent litigation, but I'm concerned
that requests for humorous postings of unidiomatic English written by
native Japanese serves no enlightening purpose with respect to tech
communications. If anything, it only ridicules the Japanese. And despite
the posters request to send replies directly to him, I've already seen one
reply posted to this list.
>A colleague of mine is working in Japan developing courses and
>textbooks for IBM and the Japan STC. He pleads...
>==============================================================
>I need a multitude of examples of poor, unidiomatic English
>written by native Japanese.
>Just a few words in defense of the writers of these gems. They have
>attempted to write in an international language (English) that is about
>as different from their own as any two languages can be. Most E1Lers
>who have laughed (or sneered) at this writing would not be able to write
>a single intelligible thought in Japanese.
>I want to collect as many humorous examples as I can, but I'm also
>*very* interested in examples of miscommunication that led to tragedy
>or litigation. Of course. I see quite a few malaprops here, but I bet
>many of you have some delightful or exasperating examples you would like
>to share.
>==============================================================
>If you have real examples of errors native Japanese speakers
>have while trying to communicate in English, please send
>them to me. (Thank you!) I'll forward them.
>I don't follow TECHWR-L closely, so I'll emphasize that...* TO ME *
>Thanks.
>David Oberstadt daveo -at- vnet -dot- ibm -dot- com
>Data Management/User Technology
>Santa Teresa Laboratory, San Jose, California
Nancy S. Burns, Technical Writer
National Solar Observatory
Tucson, Arizona
e-mail: nburns -at- noao -dot- edu
